I dream of rainy mornings and overcast afternoons,
of sleeping in the back of math classes,
yet being rapt in the front of history.
I dream of sushi bars, sitting at the edge with my friends,
and laughing between bookshelves as we look for the worst published.
I dream of waking up one day and I’m back in Oregon,
and nothing changed,
I still have my friends,
some sort of meaning,
some sort of resemblance.
But I’m stuck here.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
She sits in her room, staring at the bright glow of the laptop screen. Disheveled hair and tired eyes reveal the insanity that is lying within. She doesn’t know who she is anymore, at first she was just some girl with a blog, and then it happened. One little joke. It turned into a joke, a running gag, and now it had exploded. People know of her reputation, but many others do not. Every post she makes is laced with skepticism, but sometimes it slips through the cracks.
She wasn’t even trying this time.
She just wanted other people to hope with her, to hope that her favorite character was a live, and still kicking ass.
But someone thought it was real. The truth.
She hadn’t intended to troll that time.
“Who am I…?” she whispers, staring at the hands that type out her words.
I have demons in the brain,
& a few skeletons in the closet.
The demons whisper promises
which turn out to be lies.
The skeletons scratch at the door,
that is my mouth,
that wants to say what should be told.
But I’ll lock the door up tight,
I can control my brain.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling—
so empty. So insignificant.
Because some of us will be those in life,
the ones with no future or promises.
We all can’t be success stories.
You remember kind words and harsh hands.
You remember promises of better days and them being ruined by your own mistakes.
Happiness was fake and manufactured by your own desire for acceptance, crafted by hands and a mouth that was skilled at lying. A fantasy was created that you fell into so deeply that you forgot who you were. You were not the person you created, you would never be the fabrications or the person you wished to be.
“I’m sorry.”
Sorry’s never good enough, is it? But it’s good enough for you, because when he says those words, everything’s okay. When he talks of love, it feels like everything is right. You don’t feel alone anymore. You feel like maybe you have a place in the world, maybe you have a purpose.
He eventually grows tired of you and what you aspire to be. You’re too young to understand the weight of your actions, or his completely. You cry yourself to sleep when he says it’s over, but he comes back the next day.
It’s a repetition. A cycle on repeat that you’re unaware of because through all this pain, there’s some sort of hope at the end. He has his own troubles as well, so you suppose in the end, you’ll heal him. And in return, he’ll heal you.
I’m sorry for the fantasy, child. It never turns out that way.
“So then, he told me to not worry about it, and he’ll do all the practical work, I’d just have to write down what he tells me to…” Kaeja finishes her story weakly, unsure what is so fascinating about it, as the lunch table had fallen silent. What had just been an anecdote for Minnie had suddenly turned into a story time, with three more pairs of eyes staring at her.
“Oh god,” the pink one, as Kaeja mentally referrers to her, as she’s donned completely in pink from the bow in her hair to her converse sneakers, frowns. “Is your lab partner—?”
“It’s Saule Haack, yeah,” Minnie says to Danielle in confirmation. Danielle lets out a sympathetic groan, and the red one frowns—or Nadia, as that is the color of her hijab.
“You’ll survive,” Minnie’s friend Addison says to Kaeja, looking up from her book. Kaeja can’t find a color for her, as she’s not wearing a color that overwhelming any of the others. Maybe ‘Glasses’ would be a suitable nickname, but Kaeja finds that one a bit rude. “If he’s being too much, just tell him to back off.”
“Though having Saule as a lab partner is nice,” Danielle pauses, spoon in her mouth. “He does all the work, and he’s smart, so you’re sure it’s right.”
“I like Chemistry, though…” Kaeja trails off with uncertainty, and Nadia gives Kaeja an encouraging smile as Minnie jumps up from the table and hurries out of the lunch room.
“Then see if Saule’s willing to work with you?” Nadia asks. “You have to prove to him you’re not an idiot.”
“Or break his nose,” Danielle says. “Like that one time Minnie did, remember?”
“I still don’t understand how she made it look like an accident,” Addison peeks over her book once more. “Or why Haack also said it was an accident. It obviously wasn’t.”
“Haack’s a weirdo or he’s terrified of Minnie,” Danielle shrugs her shoulder, popping the spoon back in her mouth. “Well, both.”
“Doesn’t take much to be terrified of Minnie…” Nadia trails off, and a realization dawns on her face. “Oh. Oh dear. I’ll be right back…” She rises from her seat and hurries out of the lunchroom, and Danielle erupts into laughter.
“Minnie must like you, Kaeja,” Danielle winks.
“Huh? What makes you say that?” Kaeja blinks, and pokes at her fruit cup with a fork.
“Well,” Danielle glances towards Addison, who rolls her eyes and returns to her book. “If Haack has a broken nose tomorrow, you’ll know for sure.”
Kaeja is a master at obtaining her own bus seat.
It’s easy enough to do when the bus isn’t crowded, but when it is, you have to put on an act. Looking as sick as possible. Spreading out. Placing a backpack at the very end of the seat, to take up the most possible space. Hair in front of face. Hoodie pulled up. Staring blankly out the window.
“Hey, can I move your backpack?”
A challenger. Kaeja glances through a curtain of bright, bleached orange hair, to see Minnie standing there in her bright green rain jacket, and shorts.
It’s freezing. She’s wearing shorts.
At least the rain jacket makes some sense.
Deciding that she’ll have to put on some acting, Kaeja slowly straightens herself up and lets out a slight moan. She reaches slowly, with a purposely shaky hand, towards her backpack. Minnie’s still standing there. Kaeja looks up at her through her curtain of hair, as the bus slowly begins to move, and Minnie grips onto the back of the bus seat.
“Are you sick?”
“N-No,” Kaeja stutters, half purposely, half flustered. She pulls the backpack into her lap, and sits up as Minnie sits down next to her. Their elbows touch momentarily, until Kaeja jerkily pulls them in.
“You’re acting like you are.”
“Yeah,” Kaeja pulls down her hoodie. “I’m not, though. Don’t worry.”
Minnie stares at her and then laughs. “Alright. You’re a bit weird, Kaeja, you know that?”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“And cute.”
Kaeja frowns. “I haven’t heard that.”
“Oh,” Minnie blinks. “Seriously?”
“Yup,” Kaeja twirls a strand of hair, and she watches the houses pass by.
She’s pretty when she forgets.
It’s not a conventional pretty, of course. Kaeja isn’t conventionally pretty. Her nose is too long, her eyes too wide, her lips too chapped. She’s too pale and her hair too ragged. It’s a shade of orange that wouldn’t look out of place in some sort of juice mix, but on someone’s head, it can only be described as alarming. Maybe if she brushed out her hair, straightened it up, pulled it back, it would look normal. It’d be a fashion statement.
It’s not a fashion statement, though. It’s just Kaeja being Kaeja.
And she’s pretty when she forgets the world around her.
Minnie isn’t sure how to describe the peace that overcomes Kaeja when she’s pouring over chemistry homework. She isn’t sure how to explain to anyone Kaeja’s passion for science, for the branch of science in school that everyone hates. How Kaeja could sit there balancing equations for hours in a methodical way, gray eyes flashing across the page as her hand follows, scribbling down a fury of numbers and letters and equations.
“Do you need help?” Kaeja asks Minnie, who’s just watching her. She hasn’t touched her page, she hasn’t glanced at the problems. Minnie’s load of homework is light in comparison to Kaeja’s. Minnie would have never dreamed of taking things like AP Chemistry and AP Calculus.
But, for some reason, Kaeja does.
“I think I got it,” Minnie says hastily, straightening up in her seat and glances down at the handful of equations she has to solve. “Well, actually…how would I balance this?”
“Let me see,” Kaeja leans forward, and her hand flattens out the textbook page to get a better look at it. She bites her bottom lip as she skims the directions, and a small ‘oh’ escapes when she finishes reading. “Well, you need to—”
Minnie isn’t listening to a word, because Kaeja’s pretty when she forgets.
Her bouquet of jacquemionts were brought from his brief jaunt,
a jejune juxtapose of childlike judgement.
The flowers gave way to kaleidoscope that revealed their kismet,
a knell from the church bell.
Underneath lay a labyrinth with a lambent laodicean of knowledge,
which was lascivious in nature, and lassitude in reality, covered in a layer of listlessness provided by lithium.
Brought by the malady of death a mannequin is made in her image,
a marionette to masquerade a maudlin medley of mystique.
There’s a dream of a naiad who promises a nebulae in the nimbus overhead,
from the novae that cannot be described in a simple novella, as that suggests such existence as nugacious.
Beyond the edges of the universe lies an oasis in oblivion,
through obsidian clouds of opaque nature with opulence in orbit.
From there there is a palatial wonder surrounded by palisade,
with pallid men and a paramour of women proud of their pasquinade.
Her goal is quintessence, which in reality is quinsquose,
and the thought makes her quiver, for it promises a quotidian life.
This rapture she carries, however, in this realm, with regalia and resonance,
screams of a revenant, one long forgotten, brought back in reverie and rhapsody.
Alphabetically composed by some of English’s most beautiful words.
The Acolyte’s attempt to alleviate the allure of amber ambrosia is brought to amnesia,
where he forgets his ancestry and suffers from apoplexy,
and he remembers the bayoneted belladonna from his youth,
with her sweet berceuse that made him feel the bezaleel,
where she danced in a cabaret with cadence, cadence in a caesious, calico dress,
which caress her clandestine clavicle, a citadel to cleanse.She is daedalian, a master at dalliance, a contrast to his daphnean nature,
and at dawn she brings him to delirium, as a sort of denouement.
Ebon hair seems to echo her intentions, an effleurage of seduction,
an eidolon to elapse, elate, elicit, all brought forth by an elixir.
This facade of felicity is helped by the foliage, a formulaic forte,
a frolic through frost and fuchsia, in a fuselage of fame.
The galaxy brought forth a gale of gloaming gloom,
and from that glyph a gracile, grandeur mystery appeared.
He hallucinates her hazel eyes, complimented by heliotrope,
a helix of hubris, a hue to humiliate.
The icicle stabbing is idyllic, an illusion to illustrate and imbue
the immaculate nature of God, and to clear away his indolence feigned by innocence.
Alphabetically composed by some of English’s most beautiful words.
Kaeja hated wearing skirts, of all things. They felt limiting. They felt like an attempt to be prettier than she actually was, like she was almost advertising herself with skinny legs and pale leg hair. Most days, no, every day, she wore skinny jeans. Those were her comfort, her sanctuary, it was a statement that suggested she did care for what she wore but was effortless to put on in the morning.
Skirts suggested effort. Worst of all, the only skirt she owned showed off her bruised knees.
It was with desperation that morning she discovered that every single one of her skinny jeans had been left in the washing machine overnight. She had attempted to sneak out of the house wearing a damp pair, but Mom caught her, demanded she go back upstairs, and put something else on. Sweatpants wouldn’t do, so the only option she had was a floral skirt from last Christmas she wore once for Dad’s friend’s funeral.
“Never seen you wear a skirt before, special occasion?”
From anyone else, Kaeja would have seen the question as taunting. But from Minnie, it seemed to be general curiosity, as she sat down next to her in their secluded corner of the lunchroom, brown bag in hand. Minnie never wore skirts, and rarely pants, Kaeja usually saw her abrasive friend wearing gym shorts. Today, as usual, she was.
“Not really,” Kaeja mumbled in response, pulling down on her skirt in frustration. In reality, no one had noticed the change in the orange-haired girl’s usual attire, or if they did, they didn’t say anything. “All my jeans were dirty…”
“I thought it didn’t suit you,” Minnie said, a smile forming on her face. “Way too girly.”
Kaeja pulled down on her skirt once more, which caused Minnie to raise her eyebrow. She didn’t ask any more questions, however, and the two ate their lunches in a more deafening silence than usual. After they both finished, Minnie suggested they wander outside for awhile before lunch was over. Kaeja was more than happy to comply with a nod, and the two wandered around near the football stadium, Kaeja still making sure her skirt completely covered her knees.
“Why is that skirt bothering you so much, anyways?” Minnie finally asked, after Kaeja pulled down on the ends one time too many.
Kaeja let out a groan at the question and looked up towards the sky, as if encouraging Zeus to come out from behind the clouds and strike her with his lightning bolt.
“No Zeus,” Minnie said sternly, regretting she ever confirmed his existence to Kaeja. “What’s wrong with it?”
“My knees…” Kaeja finally admitted, and she pulled up the skirt one inch, two inches, to show the collection of black, blue, greenish, yellow contusion on her knees. “Look at them.”
“How’d they get like that?” Minnie blinked.
“Know the woods near our neighborhood?” Kaeja asked hesitantly.
“You wander around there?”
“Ever since you said you did…”
It wasn’t exactly a safe place for Kaeja to wander around in, was the first thought in Minnie’s head. With a sigh, Minnie lifted up the ends of her shorts up slowly, to show almost identical knees in severity in comparison to Kaeja.
“How did you get those—?” Kaeja said, panic rising in her voice, but Minnie dropped the shorts to cover her knees once more.
“Soccer,” Minnie told her. “Never said it was a glamorous sport now, did I?”
“No,” Kaeja admitted, and Minnie laughed.
“Come on, we better head back inside before the bell rings.”
Kaeja lingered close to Minnie as the two strode towards the school building, feeling almost happy that she had bruised knees.
